Long term techie switched to ecological field work in habitat restoration, mainly wetlands with some scrublands. In the field over 80% of the time. Bliss.
Fuck I need to do something like this. I’m terrified of the loss of income though. I need to make my life cost less.
It’s not easy but you can do it. Not uncommon to find people who came to this field late. As you say, downsizing lifestyle for affordability is often necessary. But you can do it.
I want to start farming and growing vegetables. My dream is to have a pantry filled with wall to wall canned and pickled stuff I grew myself… to live for an entire winter on good I grew and preserved…
Same with chickens. Fresh eggs and meat…
Do you have a garden?
I moved into a townhouse too late to plant anything but next year! Definitely not nearly enough to support myself but I’m saving to buy an acreage in the next few years.
You can have a garden on a small patio. Get wire shelves and put planters on them. Kinda like this:
They sell a “greenhouse” at Home Depot that’s basically a wire shelf with plastic thrown over it.
Or you can get a planter like this that sits on the patio or one that hangs on your fence
Nosy apt complex would complain about “excessive plants”.
I guess it depends on the apartments? I’ve got a friend who grows lots of veggies on their small patio
Dude, we just gotta restart civilisation by this point.
The first generation of the post-apocalypse be filled with enthusiasts and nihilists alike.
Nihilists embracing absurdity can be positively enthusiastic.
That’s the biggest mjndfuck for me.
In the 90s and 2000s, people made fun of me for constantly being on the computer whenever possible. Now those same people are completely hooked on their pocket computers and now I’m the one making fun of them.
I don’t know how we got to this point, but all I know is that Steve Jobs is mostly to blame. The iPhone changed everything and now nobody knows how to interact with each other anymore, which is especially frustrating when trying to get assistance from anyone for anything. Even the simple process of returning a product to a store is now a lot more frustrating than it used to be, because the person running customer service absolutely refuses to interact with the customer.
Corporates perfected the Marketing department, also known as the Department of Lies and Half Truths so well, that even they believe their own spiel these days.
Mass Psychosis, I think it’s called, when everyone gets swept in a single line of thought and herd mentality sets in.
The other day a mail informed me, that my battlenet account was locked due to suspicious activity. I went to the website to get support. Unlocking my account via the “support” did not do anything. I tried creating a ticket or talking to someone. You need to log into your account to do that.
Even the simple process of returning a product to a store is now a lot more frustrating than it used to be, because the person running customer service absolutely refuses to interact with the customer.
i kinda assume that businesses give out the guideline to hesitate when taking back objects, as they lose money that way (lower net revenue).
More like 40 years ago
In 2000 the whole data hording apparatus hadn’t been fully implemented yet, and AI surveillance was something more so seen as science fiction, nothing to worry about until possibly 2100. Sure there was some data collection but it wasn’t like billions of people were walking around with surveillance tech in their pocket 24/7. Things have changed and drastically. Methods to monitor, model, predict, and control human behavior are now a thing and quite robust. If only people were aware of what’s happening there would be a mass migration to secure hardware, OS’s, comms, and of course not a single cloud based always on assistant in sight. IOT devices are cool when they are secure but they often get the least attention, few if any security updates. If you can get rid of robot vacuumes, smart home assistants, smart TVs, smart thermostats, switch to secure FOSS OS’s on your computer and phone.
You can point a laser at someone’s window and accurately record their keystrokes from the sound vibrations. Things go deep in the surveillance and intelligence world. Nothing is truly and absolutely secure, just more difficult to crack.
I’m not a tech person, and I truly enjoy my phone, but the only smart device I’ve ever had was a puppy cam I’ve gotten rid of and a convection oven you can turn on with an app, which I don’t have on my phone. My car is a newer model and has Android Auto and I do not use it at all. I have never voluntarily used AI beyond having it forced upon me by companies. Zero interest.
A lot of tech today is over priced subscription/data farming crap that is locked and dumbed down so the average consumer can use it without overloading their limited brain capacity.
I’m not going to sign up or use an app on my phone to activate a piece of tech.
Luckily there are still DIY projects I can tinker with. And it’s much more satisfying making it yourself, although more time consuming. But that’s part of every hobby, right.
20 years ago, I remember phones were cool and never had a crazy price-tag before the iPhone showed up. Tech in general was affordable and made sense. I mean look at the market now, you see companies forcing new tech upon us by skipping the rule of “need vs want” while making a purchase.
On a side note, I miss those fancy slider phones from the 2000s.
I miss the phones that slid open sideways and had a mini keyboard :/
a modern sidekick would go so hard, discord kids would absolutely love it.
i’m really tempted to get a clicks communicator if it doesn’t suck.
Absolutely. Seeing a $2k price tag for a phone is mind-boggling to me.
At least the phones from the 2000 had character, not like today’s simple cuboid phones.
Reformed computer programmer here (born in the 70’s, techie in the 90’s). My laptop is 16 years old and runs Linux. My phone is an 8-year old refurb I got off Amazon for $80. And I now do ham radio. I even send emails over RF just because I like knowing I can communicate with voice or text without needing cell service or an internet connection.
I’ve been getting interested in HAM, but it seems really intimidating to get started actually doing stuff and working towards a license. Any resources that you’d recommend for an absolute beginner?
If you’re in Canada there’s hamstudy. Im sure there are similar community projects worldwide depending on where you live. The duality of HAM is that they try to educate and bring more people into the hobby while also being unfiltered pricks if you violate unspoken HAM etiquette which drives away more people…
I made a website of sorts with a page for new hams. There’s links to a cheap study guide and a free one, should have all the info you need. There are also some cheaper ham radio reviews, when I first got in I was on a severe budget. But the “New Hams” page tells you everything you need to know. The hobby can seem like a lot when you’re new (there is A LOT of directions to go in ham radio). Feel free to ask if you have questions, you can post here or my email at the bottom of the page: https://sites.google.com/view/ki5ona/new-hams?authuser=0
I did it. I’m in the forest now.
how is it like in there
It’s beautiful in the summer. A little dark and damp in the winter. You stop seeing the sun all together because it doesn’t get high enough in the sky to clear the trees.
Life long techie here. I have retreated to the forest.
I am one of the few people in my office that still has a normal (digital) wristwatch.
I love my 13-ish(?) year old citizen eco-drive solar analog watch.
My G-Shock is my everyday watch. Solar powered and multiband 6, nothing is more accurate.
G-Shocker user here. Mind is still going strong too, but I’m hoping to get a AE-1200 Casio one of these days
As a tech person, I try to do have a lot of smart devices that I can self host, try to use home assisntat, bridges to my own NAS, have some rpi for my own DNS filter (with pi-hole)
My TV is offline while I am using a Apple TV box for streaming
And yeah some stuff is unnecessary. I don’t have a smart fridge, but I have an old iPad with a custom home assistant dashboard in my kitchen
Yeah, just setup a zigbee or z-wave network for your smart home, and just block the MAC address of the controller on your router.
None of the IoT devices will be able to contact anything on the internet, and you can still access them while you are connected to your own wifi.
I haven’t connected any appliances to my network, but I may try Zigbee.
I’m not optimistic about the future of home appliances. Without stronger privacy protections, there’s little stopping manufacturers from adding cellular modems to avoid the need for wi-fi to collect and transmit user data, with features/usability locked behind accepting ToS.
Home assistant is so fucking good.
Just came back from a 4 day camping trip in the mountains where I turned my phone off and forgot it existed and just sat back down in my seat in my cubicle at my IT job.
I’m fucking over this.
Hear me out… anti-WiFi trees.
They grow towards any RF signals and their leaves are specially shaped to attenuate anything over 900MHz. They use the extra energy to increase their density to better resist harvesting and increase their height.
I read about a fungus found near the reactor in Chernobyl that seemed to be using the radiation as an energy source, so it seems plausible for a plant to evolve to absorb RF energy.
The actual energy in the RF is basically nothing. The sun has been outputing RF since the beginning of existence I’m pretty sure something would have evolved to make use of it if it had any sufficient energy density.
But if you think about it your phone is generating an RF field off the back of a tiny lithium ion battery, almost all of that power is going to power the screen anyway, the dribble of power that so left over is transmitted and then spread out over 50 kilometers of area. Anyone location is receiving less power than it would if it just absorbed power from sound waves
